if i had a flower for every time i thought of you
by fluggerbutter
Summary: i could walk through my garden forever


Fittingly, he meets her on the balcony. She arrives in the late afternoon. It's funny to see her from so high up, and the sun behind her.

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel." He leans an elbow onto the railing and tucks his chin in his hand. "You've cut your hair."

"Are you going to start batting your lashes?" she asks.

"I might as well," he says, and he does, quite charmingly. "I'm trying to woo a princess."

"Consider her wooed," she says. "Let me up, William."

" _William?_ " he repeats. "The door's open. Since when is it _William_?"

She pushes open the back door. Her words now echo from inside. "Since you divorced me and married Sleeping Beauty, Charming."

There is no trace of malice in her voice, just wistfulness, affection. She is on the balcony with him sooner than he expected.

He turns around and takes a moment to soak her in. She is the type of person who must always be soaked in, slowly, and with vast and deep appreciation: There is too much of her to realize at once. She is slight of build but there is a strength to her stance that always catches people off guard. Her short hair is a halo of shocking scarlet. In her gaze is something harsh to offset the softness of her skin, porcelain and freckled with a spattering of stars.

She never _looks_ as much as she _stares_. Rapunzel spent too much of her life in blindness to pretend she doesn't want to see _._

That stare was an instrumental part of why Charming wanted to marry her. He was a prince, and later a prince rejected, and later a prince wrongly wived; he was used to people avoiding his eyes, bowing their heads low, sneaking glances at other people when they thought he wasn't looking. And here was this girl, half-forgotten in the forest, burning her emerald gaze straight through him.

Perhaps that promised fear and fire but he _longed_ for it.

In the end, there was no fear, and what fire there was turned out to be beautiful. Everything was beautiful with her: Even the sky, which he'd long since dismissed. The trees were no longer _tangled_ but _intricate_ and the river was no longer _impossible to cross_ but _quite possible to picnic by_ , and all the stars had names now, not just the ones that explorers and astrologists had deigned to deem important. Flowers dying was exciting: New ones would replace them. Flowers blooming was the most exciting of all.

"I've seen it happen," she said, "From my window."

They were lying in the grass by the tower on a blanket he'd brought. She was curled up against his side and his eyes were closed. "What, the flowers bloom? I've seen that, too."

"No, no, no." She rolled nearly atop him and clutched his hand, splaying her other hand across his face. "Listen."

He opened one eye, saw the sunlight filtered through her fingers, closed it again. "I'm listening."

"You've seen it like _this_ : One day they're not there, the next day they're a little bit there, the next day they are. Right?"

"The flowers?"

"Yes."

"Right."

"Okay, fine," she said, "but _listen_ —"

"I'm listening."

She released him of her touch. He lazily opened one eye again. She was sitting cross-legged now, her eyes lit up. Her palms were closed. "I've seen them open up all their little petals—" She opened her hands, finger by finger, painstakingly slow. "—just like this, over _days_."

Both his eyes were open now. "You've just sat there and watched the flowers bloom?"

"It's—" She took a breath. "It's _so much_."

"You didn't _sleep_?"

She smiled brightly. Her youth made a beam of her. "I've slept enough."

He couldn't help but grin. She saw his joy, delighted in it, laughed and leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

It was not only the fields and forests she loved. All Rapunzel saw, she saw as roses. "Did you know," she said once, as she ran a hand through his hair, "that you're the most beautiful human being on this earth?"

Charming had had his share of flattery, but this was different. Rapunzel did not know yet how to lie. He was taken so completely by the honest bluntness of her words that it was almost a minute before he could respond.

"You've only ever met me," he said gently.

"But I _know_ ," she said, and he could not let the truth take her sureness from her.

Later, after their wedding, punch-drunk with wine and giddiness and having agreed not to do anything but sleep until lunch tomorrow, he asked her, "So?"

"So what?" she yawned, as she pillowed her head on his outstretched arm.

He nuzzled her hair, which was down to her shoulders now. "The whole kingdom was out there today. Am I still the prettiest human being on this earth?"

"You're _spoiled,"_ she sighed, and turned to kiss him. "I can't believe you'd ask me that. Of course you are. You're gorgeous."

" _You_ are," he mumbled, because she was his wife, and dreams of ebony curls and crimson lips had not and would not matter.

A year later, they were in the carriage, passing through Provence on their way to Milan. It had just stopped raining that morning, and the sun was shining as if trying to prove itself still worthy of their affection. The magnolias were in full bloom. Clover had spread across the rolling hills like verdant wildfire. In the distance, long swaths of lavender swayed in the breeze.

"It's spring," he said, his eyes on the flowers.

"I know," she said, and did not look up from the letter she was writing.

Charming knew then that they would fall apart one day, but decades passed before he thought to consider if perhaps it was his fault. Palace life was not conducive to her wonder, could not sustain it. It would not let her maintain even the prettiest of lies. And that included whatever she had built him up to be; in her mind, before long, he was bound to unravel.

"Since when does William Charming not get the door for a princess?" she says now, teasing.

Charming motions to his ankle, lifts it up a little so she can see the bandage beneath the hem of his pants. "Since _this_. Sprained it moving Jake's—my—" He winces. "Jake's boxes."

"Jake?" says Rapunzel. "Jacob _Grimm_? Why would you—"

Charming blushes. He knows he's blushing; he can feel the heat in his cheeks, but he hopes she won't notice, or that she just lets it go—

" _No_ ," she says. "Really?"

Charming sighs and turns to head inside, limping slightly. "I don't know, Zel. Yes. Maybe. _Sure._ "

Rapunzel follows. "But he's moving in," she says.

"We're friends."

"You're roommates."

They turn a corner, head down the short hall to Charming's bedroom. He opens the door for her but won't meet her eyes as she steps through.

"I've had roommates," he mutters.

"You've had _girlfriends_ ," she says.

"You've kept track," he accuses, and points to a wooden chest on top of his dresser. "That's it."

Rapunzel tiptoes to reach the chest and pull it down to the floor. "It's lighter than I remember," she says.

"You didn't own a lot," he points out. She nods, conceding, as she bends down to thumb at the lock.

"I don't know where the key is," she says.

"Well, Jake can get it open for you—or Daphne—"

"I don't know if I want to get it open."

Charming crosses his arms, leaning a shoulder against the doorframe. "You don't have to. I just thought you might—I don't know. It was important to you."

"Was," she says. "It's been a long time since I was in that tower."

"It's been a long time since a lot of things."

She glances up at him. "You finally gave her up, huh?"

He looks down at his feet. "Yeah," he says. "I guess I did."

Rapunzel smiles softly. "Well, that's for the best."

She turns back to the chest, her palms pressed back against the carpet. He watches her and his heart aches. "I'm sorry," he says.

"I know," she says gently, though she does not look at him.

He bites his lip. She ducks her head, curls falling past her face to hide her eyes. A bird outside is singing sweetly: It is springtime, after all, and the trees are in bloom.

"Didn't I give you the key?" she says finally.

The air between them is lighter from the moment she stands. Charming leads her to another bedroom, where unpacked boxes are stacked to the ceiling.

She gets to work without hesitation. He helps her, or tries to, until his ankle starts to swell.

She sits him down and starts unpacking again, humming while she works. They are the same melodies from years ago. Charming can suddenly see himself falling in love with her a second time—if he didn't have Jake, if he didn't know she deserved better.

She finds it in an old box labelled _Misc._ It takes almost an hour. The key is bronze and rusting, but she looks upon it with love and something bittersweet.

Inside the chest are two books, a globe, and a nearly empty bottle of lavender perfume. The globe is not quite accurate, and unmarked in some places. Beneath the perfume there is a little booklet, a libretto: Mozart's _Cosi fan tutte._

"You read opera?" Charming says.

"I read anything," says Rapunzel. She takes everything out of the chest and squints at what's left: nothing but dust and spiderwebs. "I'm sure there was more than this."

Charming opens the copy of _Candide._ "You could get a fortune for this," he muses, turning the pages carefully. "It's what, two hundred years old?"

"Two hundred and fifty, I'm sure," says Rapunzel. "I'm not selling it."

"Of course not," he says, and then, just to rile her up: "It's best to wait another century or so."

She rolls her eyes. "Give me that."

He shrugs and lets her take it, then reaches for the Shakespeare.

"I'd sell _that_ ," says Rapunzel, as he examines the binding.

Charming frowns at her. "It's one of my favourites,"

"Honestly, I cycled my reading, and I was always tempted to skip that one when I got to it. But I never did."

"Then why did you lock it up?" says Charming, opening the book. "Oh."

"What?" says Rapunzel.

He shows her the inside of the play. The pages have been glued together and cut out, making just enough space for a slim brown journal.

" _Oh_ ," echoes Rapunzel. "I forgot." She takes the journal and discards _The Tempest_ back in the chest. Charming resumes his perusal of _Candide_.

"There are flowers here," he says suddenly.

"Hm?" Rapunzel does not look up from the journal.

"Flowers," he says, "and leaves, you've pressed them. Is this grass?"

Rapunzel leans over. "It must be from the first time I went out." She looks at him. "With you."

"Poppies, violets—look at this, irises, too. Did irises grow by the tower?"

"You could have brought them for me."

"I must have."

"I miss you."

A faded white magnolia flutters to the floor.

"I miss you too," he murmurs. She drops her head to his shoulder with a sigh.

"Do you remember," she says, "I always used to sing in the orchard."

He leans past her to pick up the flower by her feet. "I remember you were always singing, period."

She smiles. The sight sustains the fading sunlight. He tucks the magnolia into her hand.

"All right," she says, pushing away from him, turning the bloom over in her fingers, "Do you remember this one?"

Her voice still carries like the sound of silver on crystal: clear, strong, bright. He is as enraptured as he was the first time he heard her serenade from the depths of the woods.

" _And when she came there and he found he was gone,  
_ _She stood like some lambkin, forever undone,  
_ _He has gone with some other, and forsaken me,  
_ _So adieu to my lover forever, cried she."_

That beauty and heartbreak are inconsolably entwined is something Charming learned from her: Wasn't her joy borne, in a twisted way, of her mother's cruelty? Knowing this does not make it hurt any less. Charming nearly chokes on the lump in his throat when he tries to speak again. "I don't think that's how it went," he says.

She takes the book from him and presses the magnolia back between the pages. "You know," she says—and there is that smile again, ardently soft, "You're probably right."

Fittingly, she leaves him on the balcony, waving goodbye. It's lovely to see her from so high up, and the dusk behind her.

* * *

 _a/n: the song is a variation on Green Bushes, a 19th-century english folk song._


End file.
